Della Valle, Family

DELLA VALLE, FAMILY. - Illustrious Roman house, whose earliest member was a RUSTICO made cardinal by Honorius II in 1219.

The family had its houses first near the Forum of Trajan and from there moved in the 15th century to the Via Papale (now Corso Vittorio Emanuele), where the original palace, destroyed by Charles V's Landsknechts in the sack of Rome (1527), was rebuilt in its present form by Lorenzo Lotti, known as the Lorenzetto.

The most distinguished members of this family are: ANDREA, cardinal, b. in Rome on 30 Dec. 1463, d. there on 3 Aug. 1534. After traveling in Europe and Persia, he returned to Rome in 1495 and was bishop of Crotone (2 Dec. 1496), then of Mileto (1508), and in that capacity took part in the Fifth Lateran Council (1512). He was appointed by Leo X regent of the Apostolic Chancery and then cardinal of the title of S. Agnese in Agone (1 July 1517). He held in commendam various abbeys and numerous bishoprics, even simultaneously. Clement VII entrusted him with the legation of Naples (1523). During the sack of Rome of 1527, although he sided, according to the family tradition, with the Colonna and the imperial forces, he had his palace sacked and had to pay a large sum to ransom himself.

In 1532 he reexamined, together with Card. A. del Monte, on behalf of Clement VII, the controversy that had arisen between the Observants and the Franciscan Hermits (Capuchins) (cf. Wadding, Annales, XVI, II, p. 335). In Apr. 1533 he received the sees of Albano and Palestrina. He was a man of great judgment and prudence and a connoisseur and collector of antiquities.

Renata Orazi Ausenda

PIETRO, traveler, b. in Rome on 11 Apr. 1586, d. there on 21 Apr. 1652. After the literary and artistic pursuits of his youth he left his city, and between brief escapes overseas he stayed in Naples until 1614, where he met M. Schipano, to whom he dedicated the 54 letters concerning his travels, rich in valuable information and used by geographers and other travelers.

On 8 June 1614 he began from Venice the long itinerary: after a stop at Zante and among the places he believed to be the ruins of Troy, he landed at Constantinople; from there to Alexandria and Cairo. He climbed Sinai and from Suez made his way to Jerusalem (Easter of 1616). Observing and taking notes, he continued his pilgrimage toward Damascus, Aleppo, Baghdad and Persia, touching there various cities. By 1621 he was at Persepolis and was the first to describe its cuneiform inscriptions. He headed into India, partly coasting along it as far as Calcutta and partly penetrating inland as far as Gujarat. Further stops in Arabia and finally he returned to Rome on 28 March 1626, received with great honors by Urban VIII.

D. V., among other things, copied the inscriptions of the mosque of at-Tajjibah (Syria); he acquired many manuscripts which he left to the Vatican Library, where his apologetic epistle (rindish) of the Catholic religion in Persian is preserved; he translated into Latin an â'ita catechism and into Persian the treatise of the former Jesuit C. Borri on the system of Tycho Brahe. - See pl. LXXXIX.